the tree of gold and woven flame
by sweetwatersong
Summary: The winding streets are lean and hungry, filled with dust and blood and fire. Their children are no different. [Street urchin AU.]
1. rare the fruit of victory

**the tree of gold and woven flame**  
rating: pg  
characters: Clint Barton & Natasha Romanoff  
warnings: amputation.  
author's note: For hufflepuffsneak, who asked for "Natasha as a pickpocket and/or street magician."

summary: The winding streets are lean and hungry, filled with dust and blood and fire. Their children are no different. [Street urchin AU.]

_rare the fruit of victory_ (the beginning)

_rota 181-9_

So little is left. No peace in the city, no contentment in the hot air that creeps even into her underground bolthole, winding humid tongues through the iron grate above her head to bring the sounds of sandals and hooves, small carts clattering over the pounded earth. The prickly feeling that has sharpened in the summer heat now invades the sleep of rulers and rag-men alike, brushes over the back of her neck with a warning that everything is about to fall apart; everything is about to change.

As if it hasn't done that already.

The small board guarding the entrance slams open and she flinches, lifting fever-bright eyes towards it. Clint crouches there, chest heaving as if from a long run, distress and helpless anger and a pain he has no right to written across his tanned face.

"Natasha," he says miserably, bare feet and skinned knees easing their way into her sanctuary, taking the few steps across the dust to stop by her nest of stained silks and worn-out rugs. She pants herself in the heat, in the fire that would set this city ablaze even as it consumes her; says nothing when his face twists at the arm she clutches to her chest.

At the bandaged, blood-stained stump cradled by her remaining hand, the dark X across its back telling all the world her sins.

That she was warned, and twice at that, a tattoo for each hand.

That her third penance has been the hand caught thieving again.

He sinks into a crouch by her side, small fingers slipping into his baggy shirt to pull out a skin of water and a precious orange with chilled drops still sliding down its skin. Natasha would take him to task for that, if she could, for stealing such a rare foodstuff when the risks of being found were too great - were too high a price already - but the fever and pain drag the words from her tongue, so she only watches as his thief-marked hands peel it gently for her.

Eyes closing, she eats every slice he puts to her lips, and the restless city moves on above them.

.

.

_rota 183-4_

Natasha stares at the bright curl of orange skin, holding it carefully in fingers that do not tremble, do not burn. Curving and simple and clean, it sits on her fingertips without an understanding of its importance, of its significance. But she knows, she does, and she breathes evenly as the door to their cramped flat opens.

"Hey," Clint greets her, rubbing the dust out of his hair absentmindedly as he sets his pack on the stool. "Got another phis-bird on the roofs today with the sling, should go well with a bread loaf I got from Nani's if we roast it. The guards are still out in force." He grimaces, the expression drawing his face tight over its too-thin planes while he finishes untying the pack string knotted to warn other thieves off. "Other than that, not too bad, huh?"

Only then does he turn and see her, see what she holds with all the carefulness bestowed upon jewels and heirs and heirlooms. For a moment they are both still, caught in the dry breeze of early summer. Then his hands are the first to move, twitching unconsciously with their white scars of burns and faded blisters, rubbing against the streak of bubbling skin where their coins hadn't been enough to get a salve.

He meets her eyes, understanding, on the edge of hope. Slowly, cautiously, he reaches out and touches the slender fingers, the hand that flows seamlessly up from the dark ring of her severed wrist.

His hands hold the history of her attempts to control her pain-woken magic, to be human without harming him. With a trust that has burned him before, Clint holds her fire-made hand in his.

Their skin touches - and stays human-warm.

.

.

_rota 187-11_

The sun beats down on the port-side city, oppressive in the heat that washes and weighs over the pale and sprawling streets. But on one corner the yellow rays are distant and disregarded for the bright crackling of a performer's display, the whips of flame that trail after twirling staffs and gleaming bowls. A crowd has gathered to watch the red-robed woman dance, moving with the grace of an ansi snake, the precision of its strike. Beautiful and enchanting she holds their attention, twirling inside the fire that bends obediently around her from its confines of torches and containers, and they murmur appreciatively for her art. "It must be a trick," they tell one another when she pivots and sways, "the way she moves the staffs, swings the bowls."

In the shadows of her hood Natasha grins, meeting the gaze of the young man who works the varied crowd, and her smile is knife-edged and brilliant.

Later, when they think back on it, the onlookers remember only that the air had smelled of citrus.

_fin_


	2. and seeds shall sprout from fire

author's note: For franztastich, who asked for more from _rare the fruit of victory_. This is one of the many possible futures!

_and seeds shall sprout from fire _(the guard variation)

It takes something as simple as this to make their world, shape their world, break their world: Natasha sees Clint in handcuffs, flanked by four guards who tower above him, and catches his eye in the dust of the street.

He hunches his shoulders, relaxing the thief-marked fingers that are curled into fists and flicking them outwards, sending them away.

She turns her head - and keeps walking.

—-

"They want me to work for them," Clint tells her, hands moving restlessly over the tattooed X's on his skin. The confines of her old bolthole are cramped and bitter with the scent of disuse, but this place is expendable, is acceptable for the Ascair's guards to find.

Natasha swallows the embers in her chest and watches his fingers dance, scarred and marred and nervous, newly blistered from a bow.

—-

She skids across the roof, tiles tearing through the black fabric at the skin of her calves, her knees, unable to catch herself as the deep shadows of an alleyway yawn open below her.

"_Natasha_!"

Their human hands stretch, dark crosses reaching for each other in the hot night air, straining across years and stations and the cages of the law, and -

—-

_"Mage Romanoff, reporting for duty," she says, a faintly sardonic smile on the crimson lips that match her new uniform. He straightens from where he's been leaning in a hidden niche behind one of the pale yellow pillars and uncrosses his arms, nodding to Staff Master Hill._

_"I've got it from here," he tells the unimpressed guard before he tips his head towards the long hallway. "Want to get familiar with the Watch House?"_

_The red-haired woman studies him for a long moment, her mouth quirking with amusement and something else that flashes across too quickly to be studied, then nods._

_Her fingers tangle with his, just for a moment, as they walk out the door into the clean bright halls of their new lives, fire and relief and a partnership all in one._

—-

To catch a thief, some say, it takes a thief. Here, it takes an archer with uncanny aim and a fire mage with merciless moves.

They relegate "Stop in the name of the Ascair!" to an afterthought, eventually.

_fin_


End file.
